“It’s a logistical nightmare to quickly move with large amounts of hardware and classified data. The teams want to be able to throw their gear in a case and jump on a commercial flight.”

His boss, CEO Bill Miller, added some marketing spiel colour to this point:

“Sometimes you must take the power of advanced computing to the epicenter of a crisis or event. By putting Axellio on a plane and then at the scene, deployable teams have the power they need to quickly analyse and address any event with a unique combination of performance, density and cost at a remarkably small and easily portable footprint. No other technology can simultaneously ingest and process large data flows at such high-performance speeds and such low cost.”

And Reginald Hyde, former deputy undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, added an intelligence angle. "Portable Axellio is a fast, powerful, and portable edge computing solution that provides military and intelligence units the capability necessary to maintain global vigilance and readiness in a dangerous world."

A brochure says the system is perfect for cyber protection teams, real-time intelligence, and tactical edge computing. Well, that sounds more like it than responding to hurricane hits.

The system is good, X-IO said, for packet capture and inspection, network anomaly monitoring, streaming data analytics and multi-sensor fusion. Think more about the military and intelligence angle to a crisis than sorting out a refugee camp.

The hardware looks like this:

Two dual Intel servers,

Up to 88 CPU cores,

2TB of RAM

6 removable flash drive canisters with 12 drives per canister,

Up to 460TB dual-ported NVMe flash,

4 x 100GbitE network connectivity.

There are six modular slots for any mix of Flash. The system users X-IO’s FabricXpress architecture (Proprietary NVMe over PCIe application) to accelerate storage access, throughput, and compute speeds.

Portable Axellio tech specs

The Compute ** point leads to a note that revealed Axellio can use the full line of Xeon E5-26xx V4 processors as well as the four in the table above.

Portable Axellio is split into two suitcases that meet commercial airline standards. One carry-on suitcase contains the system’s removable NVMe flash storage for secure transportation of sensitive and classified data. A larger suitcase contains the main server chassis, which weighs less than 100lbs (45kg), meeting commercial air weight requirements for checked luggage for US military personnel.

X-IO says this 2U box can run at 12 million IOPS and 480Gbit/s transfer rates with under 50 microseconds of latency and enables advanced analytics in real time. The system can be re-assembled and become operational in minutes.

X-IO has a focus on big data analytics and edge computing in an IoT world. It’s come up with a corner case here that might provide a halo effect and encourage wider use of its 2U, all-flash Axellio array, which it calls the world’s most powerful 2U server.

X-IO Technologies is offering the portable Axellio solution via global solution partners. It sounds like they should knock on military and defence organisation doors rather than disaster relief charities – more Seal Team Six than Oxfam. ®